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Johnny One Note

Poor Johnny could only play one note in the musical Babes in Arms, 1937, Rogers and Hart.

Today, the media can only recite one phrase, “It’s because of global warming and CO2.”

It makes little difference as to the subject: If it’s bad news, it’s because of global warming and the burning of fossil fuels. For example, increased disease, flooding, drought, hurricanes, tornadoes, ice, snow, rain, melting glaciers, and so on.

On my recent river cruise down the Danube, there were low water levels and we couldn’t travel the complete distance, from Nurnberg to Budapest by boat. We were bussed from Bratislava to Budapest but were still able to do all the events we had been looking forward to doing in Budapest.

The media, reporting on low water levels, said:

“Experts say it could be a sign of more climate extremes.”

And:

“But first and foremost, [this summer] has been a wake-up call.”

Interestingly, some cities along the Danube have marked the height of floods on buildings. These show that flooding has happened somewhat randomly, for a long time … hundreds of years.

Record of flood levels, Passau, Germany. Photo by D. Dears

If you look closely at the photo you can see that the worst flood was in 1501, long before there was an increase in atmospheric CO2 levels.

The third worst flood was in 1595, again, before there were increases in atmospheric CO2 levels. And there were others, such as in 1787, and 1862 as CO2 emissions began to increase.

I’m sure some people will say, “This year is different.”

Maybe so, but the historical record continues to demonstrate, not only for flooding along the Danube River, but also for the frequency and severity of hurricanes, and for the frequency of tornados, and for flooding from sea level rise, etc., that the frequency and severity of these disasters haven’t gotten worse since atmospheric CO2 levels increased.See, Hurricane History and the Phony Myth

While the record from Passau doesn’t establish scientific proof, after all, we aren’t even sure the data record is complete, it does call into question the media’s obsession with linking weather events to climate change, or, more specifically, to climate change caused by CO2.

No matter what the threat, the historic record typically debunks the fear mongering from AGW extremists.